This deeply moving picture was painted for one of Carracci’s patrons, Astorre di Vincenzo Sampieri, a canon of the cathedral of San Pietro in Bologna. Intended as a gift for an important figure in Rome, it was retained by Sampieri, who sent a copy of it by Guido Reni instead. We view the dramatic event from within the burial chamber, the figures lit by torch; through an opening the holy women can be seen against a dawn-lit landscape. The picture was much admired. At least seven copies are known in addition to the one Sampieri sent to Rome.

J[ames]. Byam Shaw. Paintings by Old Masters at Christ Church Oxford. London, 1967, p. 103, under no. 185, mentions it as formerly in the Leuchtenberg collection, Munich; lists other versions of the composition and suggests that the prototype may have been a lost work by Annibale Carracci.

Carel van Tuyll van Serooskerken. "Badalocchio's 'Entombment of Christ' from Reggio: A New Document and Some Related Paintings." Burlington Magazine 122 (March 1980), pp. 185–86, fig. 37 (engraving), proposes that this picture (i.e., the painting formerly in the Leuchtenberg collection) is the work painted for Sampieri by Annibale and is the "lost" prototype for a group of paintings of similar composition; notes that from Malvasia's text [see Ref. 1678], the picture must date from 1595; suggests that it was probably included among the works bought from the Sampieri collection in 1811 by Eugène de Beauharnais.

A number of copies and variant copies of this composition exist [see Ref. Tuyll van Serooskerken 1980]. The finest of these is a painting in the Dulwich Picture Gallery ascribed to Sisto Badalocchio. A drawing after the picture, probably by Badalocchio, is in the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. A preparatory drawing for the figure of Christ was sold at Christie's, London, on July 6, 1982, no. 35, incorrectly ascribed to Cavedone. Guido Reni also copied the picture [see Ref. Malvasia 1678].